Emeryville police building may get new stairs after safety oversight

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Doors locked to the public at the Emeryville Police Department prompted Brian Donahue to complain about the lack of exit in case of a fire. That lead to the city looking into building an external staircase for the public’s use. (Courtesy of Brian Donahue)

EMERYVILLE — The Emeryville Police Department is tasked with keeping residents safe, but if a fire were to break out at its building, people in the lobby would have no safe way out unless an employee unlocked the doors to the stairs.

To remedy the situation and ensure that people can get out of the building quickly, the city proposes building an exterior staircase from the second-floor lobby to the ground that the public could use, Chief Building Official Victor Gonzales said.

The second-floor lobby is where people go to talk to police officials and take care of other business.

Brian Donahue, who runs the The Emeryville Tattler blog and works as a contractor, said he believes the new staircase could cost the city around $300,000. Gonzales did not provide an estimate as to how much that could cost.

Donahue noticed what he believed was a fire safety hazard at the building in 2016, and brought it up to city officials.

“I walked in there and immediately noticed there’s no fire escape,” Donahue said in an interview.

That prompted building officials to inspect the situation, and determine that the building maintains “minimum compliance” with state building codes so long as police department staff are available to help people exit the lobby during regular business hours until the exterior stairs are built, Gonzales said.

When the building at 2449 Powell St. was remodeled in 2012, the design included a staircase that the public could access to get to and from the second-floor lobby from the first floor, Gonzales said.

But the stairwell also has doors that lead to the records department and other administrative offices, said Police Chief Jennifer Tejada in an interview. Before Tejada became chief in 2015, police officials made the decision to keep the doors to the stairwell locked. Employees can access them with a key card and the doors can be unlocked remotely by dispatchers, so long as the power in the building is on.

Though Tejada wasn’t part of that decision, she believes it is sound. That’s because it meets building codes and prevents the public from entering restricted areas, she said.

“(Public access to the rest of the building) would compromise the safety and security of the employees who work here as well as all of our records,” Tejada said.

Gonzales confirmed the building passed its last annual inspection by the Alameda County Fire Department.

“The plans were not approved in error,” Gonzales said. “As is typical for any tenant improvements, following issuance of a certificate of occupancy, a tenant may choose to make changes to facilitate their business operations, unaware that these changes may impact the building’s overall safety functions. The building division is rarely notified when such seemingly harmless changes are made.”

Emeryville Mayor John Bauters, via email Monday, said he had asked the city attorney to prepare a memo for City Council members explaining the timelines and decision-making process leading up to the policy change calling for the doors to be locked.

Since the proposed exterior staircase would likely cost thousands, it would require the council’s approval.

The next day, at a City Council meeting, Bauters requested the lobby situation be put on a future council meeting agenda.

“It’s a conversation that needs to be had here because it relates to the building officials, and it relates to the public’s safety at the police station,” Bauters said at the meeting. “I think we need to be transparent to the public about what we’re doing about it at some point.”